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Brain candy for Happy MutantsTue, 31 Mar 2015 18:00:17 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Another look at Fukushima's legacyhttp://boingboing.net/2013/03/06/another-look-at-fukushimas-l.html
http://boingboing.net/2013/03/06/another-look-at-fukushimas-l.html#commentsWed, 06 Mar 2013 14:59:24 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=216901 the World Health Organization's estimates of the long-term risk of cancer and cancer-related deaths among people who lived nearest to the Fukushima nuclear plant when it went into meltdown and the people who worked to get the plant under control and into a cold shutdown.]]> the World Health Organization's estimates of the long-term risk of cancer and cancer-related deaths among people who lived nearest to the Fukushima nuclear plant when it went into meltdown and the people who worked to get the plant under control and into a cold shutdown. The good news was that those risks seem to be lower than the general public might have guessed, partly because the Japanese government did a good job of quickly getting people away from the area and not allowing potentially contaminated milk and meat to be consumed. The bad news: That one aspect isn't the whole story on Fukushima's legacy or the government's competency. Although the plant is in cold shutdown today, it still needs to be fully decommissioned and the site and surrounding countryside are in desperate need of cleanup and decontamination. That task, unfortunately, is likely to be far more difficult than anybody thought, with initial estimates of a 40-year cleanup now described as "a pipe dream". One key problem: The government cut funding to research that could have produced the kind of robots needed for this work, because it assumed that nobody would ever need them. ]]>http://boingboing.net/2013/03/06/another-look-at-fukushimas-l.html/feed17